Leather repair patches for saddle making

Has anyone used those self-adhesive leather repair patches for any aspect of model horse tack making? I bought some for repairing a favorite purse last summer, and as I got to playing with it, I glanced at the pieces of an unfinished Frankensaddle and wondered if it could be useful. It's soft, thin, easy to cut, and has its own glue. I'm thinking of using a piece for the saddle seat, just to see if it works. Has anyone else tried this?

Wow, this sounds brilliant! Please keep us posted on the results! This would be great if it works! I've never heard of anyone trying this. 😁

LOL - nuts, now I'd better get off my duff and actually do this! I'll post my results, good or bad, with the disclaimer that I'm not a regular tack maker, and it's been years since I finished my last western saddle. ;-D I *do* think these patches have potential, especially for a klutz like me. :-)

Sounds like a fun experiment! :)

Haha! I'm looking forward to it, I'm a klutz too when it comes to tack lol. I'm sure you'll do very well!

Okay, here we go, lol. I had most of the saddle pieces already cut, but I got to looking at the upper skirt, and thought what the heck. So in the first pic, the darker piece is the second upper skirt I cut out from the big adhesive (faux) leather patch. And that's the one I stuck on to the lower skirt. Look Ma, NO GLUE!! It's firmly in place, and beautifully flexible. It takes a few moments for the adhesive to really set, so you can carefully peel a piece up and make minor adjustments if you need to. Yay!

I'm going to trace the two seat pieces I have onto the back side of the patch and try cutting those out next. The one trick to cutting pieces from the patch is the adhesive side gums up the scissor blades a bit, but it's manageable. I'm battling trigger fingers in both hands :-( so it's especially slow going for me, but by golly, so far so good!

Frankensaddle first step

Awesome!

Sorry to hear that you're dealing with trigger fingers. :(

This is so interesting! Thank you for sharing your progress!

Thank you both very much for the encouragement. This experiment might have languished for who knows how long otherwise. :-) I'm determined to keep at it, albeit carefully. ;-/ The thinner, softer material is a bit easier to cut, so there's another plus. If I can get this done to something reasonably resembling a saddle, the next might get wild. Since I bought the patches for my purse, I've got only one brown...and three in different shades of GREEN. LOL!

Lol! Hmm, green parade saddle? 😂😂

I seem to have hit a minor snag...suggestions are absolutely welcome. :-D

Update!

One idea I've got for the side panels are stamped inlays, as a cover (or at least visual distraction) for the lumps. ;-) I can cut those from the same adhesive patch, or even throw in *colored* stamped inlays...maybe even GREEN. LOL